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  The Crusading Wizard

  A Wizard in Rhyme Volume Seven

  by

  Christopher Stasheff

  CHAPTER 1

  The royal family was enjoying one of the rare hours when they could feel like a family. They sat in the palace garden in a secluded and high-hedged comer of the courtyard, Queen Alisande and her husband the Lord Wizard watching their son and daughter at play in the golden light of late afternoon.

  “It is so good for them to be out of doors,” Alisande sighed, “and with us. I could wish I were not a queen, that I could spend hours and hours with my babes if I wished.”

  “If you weren’t a queen, you wouldn’t have any choice,” Matt pointed out. “You’d have to spend hours and hours with them, whether you wanted to or not.”

  “Oh … not if I were a countess or some such…”

  “Well, that’s true,” Matt mused. “On the other hand, this country would be in real trouble if you weren’t its queen.”

  “Oh, I am sure some other could rule it as well.” But Alisande glowed at the compliment, then frowned. “Still, the poor babes must be quite sad now and again, with no company but one another.”

  “A pet,” Matt said positively. “They need a pet.”

  “A pet?” Alisande stared, astounded. “A prince and princess, with an animal?”

  “A family dog, to teach them responsibility and consideration.”

  “How could a dog teach consideration?”

  “Because you have to be careful about its feelings,” Matt explained. “If you pull its tail too hard, it lets you know about it in no uncertain terms—and if you do it too often, it won’t come back to play. It doesn’t care whether the child is a prince or a beggar, you see.”

  “Might it not bite?” Alisande said in apprehension.

  “It has to be very well-trained,” Matt explained, “and training it helps the children train themselves.”

  “A princess?” Alisande shuddered, and turned back to watch the children. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed you seem to have a certain fondness for horses,” Matt pointed out, “and you get along quite well with hounds.”

  “Well … yes, but that is in the hunt!” Alisande explained. “Assuredly, every prince and princess must learn to ride-but the grooms care for the horses and the houndsmen for the dogs. We do not make pets of our packs, and would scarcely keep a horse within doors!”

  “Well, no,” Matt admitted. “I had in mind something smaller—a nice, friendly, clumsy dog, maybe—a poodle or a retriever or something like that.”

  Alisande still looked scandalized, but she tried to be reasonable. “How would such a beast teach the children to be responsible?”

  “By caring for it,” Matt said. “Make it clear to them that nobody else is going to feed it or take it for a walk, because it’s theirs. Simply having an animal that belongs to them will do wonders for their sense of self-worth, too—and it’s great company if a child feels lonely.”

  “Royal children do feel alone quite often.” Alisande lifted her head, gazing into her own past. “They have no playmates but their kin, and those seldom come …” She shook herself. “But to feed and water an animal? That is scarcely becoming to their rank!”

  “It is, if nobody else is allowed to touch the royal pup,” Matt pointed out.

  Alisande still looked thoughtful, but she said, “A dog is too dirty and awkward a beast to keep within doors. A cat, now, would be another matter.”

  “Cats are better than nothing,” Matt allowed, “but they don’t need to be walked, and you can’t train them. so they won’t make you any more responsible than you are already. They won’t come keep you company whenever you want them, either—they have this nasty little habit of only stopping by when they want company.”

  “But they are smaller, and more graceful,” Alisande pointed out, “far less likely to break a vase or a pitcher, and far better suited to life within doors.”

  “I had in mind a small dog,” Matt said, “maybe a spaniel or a Scots terrier, something that can sit in your lap and be petted.”

  “Like a cat?” Alisande smiled. “Then why not have a cat?”

  “Well, the dog can jump out of your lap and run to fetch a ball,” Matt said. “It can play games with you.”

  “And bring the ball back in its mouth, and slobber all over it as the child picks it up?” Alisande shuddered. “Cats play games, too, by chasing bits of string. They are far less disgusting.”

  “Well, I would prefer a dog,” Matt said, “but I’ll settle for a cat. When shall we go find one?”

  “Now, hold!” Alisande cried. “I have not said we shall have a pet! Only that if we do, it should be a cat!”

  “Okay, so think about it for a few days,” Matt said. “It’s really a good idea, though. Why, I’ve even heard of a king who kept a dog in his lap when he was on the throne!” He didn’t mention that Louis XIV had reigned in a world three hundred years older than Alisande’s.

  “We might set a fashion,” Alisande admitted, her gaze on the children. “I shall consider it.”

  Kaprin suddenly gave his little sister a shove. She rolled back, squalling, then bounced up with a block in her chubby hand. She threw it with all her three-year-old might and very precocious accuracy; it hit her brother on the nose. He recoiled, hand to the offended member, squalling protest, then started toward her with blood in his eye.

  “Children!” Alisande started up.

  The nursemaid was there before her, though, separating the two children and chiding them equally. “For shame, Alice! Scold sharply if you will, but do not throw things! And you, Kaprin—you know full well that no gentleman should ever strike a lady!”

  “I’m not a gentleman yet,” the six-year-old grumbled.

  “That is no excuse.”

  “There might be some advantage to a pet, after all,” Alisande allowed.

  “Just don’t think it over for too long,” Matt said.

  The question was about to be answered for them, but it was an answer that had been growing for sixteen years. It began far to the east, in a northern valley nestled among the hills on the edge of the Gobi Desert. It began in the midst of chaos, but the setting was quite peaceful—for a few minutes.

  The Oriental garden seemed magical in the moonlight, air fragrant with the perfume of exotic blossoms and stirred by a breeze, which rustled the leaves of flowering trees grown into fanciful shapes by patient gardeners over dozens of years. Wind chimes filled the night with music. The turquoise lawn seemed deep green in the moonlight, bejeweled with dew. Topiary shrubs in sculpted forms framed an ivory gazebo of ornate screens.

  So lovely a garden should have lain tranquil under the moon, its only sound the susurrus of leaves and the tinkling of the brook that ran through it, turning model mill wheels and tugging at miniature boats moored for the night at tiny, fanciful boathouses.

  It would be tranquil and still for a few minutes more, granting an illusion of peace and safety. But then, behind the scented trees, flames would roar high into the sky from the burning barracks of the horse-soldiers, and the breeze would blow the screams of horses and people alike through the garden, together with the roar and clangor of battle.

  A woman hurried across the lawn, the train of her silken robe trailing across the dew-laden grass, her long sleeves sweeping almost as low. She held a small chest in her arms, and when she reached the brook, knelt down and lowered it into the water.

  Lifting the lid, she took one last look at the little face of a six-month-old baby wrapped in a cloth-of-gold blanket, asleep from the drop of opium mixed into her milk.

  The woman’s eyes filled with tears. “Lie there
, my treasure,” she whispered, “and do not wake until the waters have borne you to safety.”

  Steel clashed against steel, much closer than before. She looked up with a gasp, then closed the lid of the little chest and pushed it out into the stream. “O Spirits of Brook and River,” she called, “I beg you, protect my child! Carry her to safety far from these monstrous barbarians! Grant her some guise that will shield her from the cruelty of men!”

  The little chest went bobbing away on the current as the woman watched, tears spilling down her cheeks, to dampen her robe.

  Then a burst of shouting made her tum, gasping in terror. Three of the barbarians came galloping toward her on their small, hardy ponies, shouting in their uncouth language, sabers flashing in the moonlight.

  “No!” she cried, and ran toward the gazebo-but one of the horsemen veered away from the others to come between herself and the slight safety of the screens. She stopped, uncertain, then turned to run to her left, but a horseman galloped wide to catch her by the arm. She screamed, but another horseman caught her other arm. She turned to bite his fingers, but the first struck the back of her head with his sword hilt, and she went limp.

  Hauling her over the pommel of his saddle, he grinned at his fellow warriors. “One more for the sacrifice,” he said. “Angra Mainyu will be pleased!”

  “I know not why that foreign sorcerer must give such an outlandish name to the Lord of Demons,” his companion replied, returning the grin, “but no matter what we call him, he will drink deeply this night.”

  Beneath the waters of the river, though, two spirits answered the mother’s call, swimming up through the river weeds more from curiosity than from kindness. They seemed to be made of seaweed and water lilies themselves, but their upper bodies had arms with hands, and their faces were very much like those of young women.

  “I thought these mortal mothers never parted with their children,” said one as she caught the floating trunk with green, chilly fingers.

  “There must be terror abroad to make her do so, Sister Shannai,” the second said. She looked back toward shore, saw the barbarians riding away with the mother, saw the graceful form of the palace silhouetted against a sky filled with fire, and wrinkled her nose. “Those barbarians who daily pollute our streams! Well might she go in terror!”

  “Then let us deprive the horsemen of this pleasure, at least.” Shannai opened the chest to look in at the baby, and smiled fondly, resting her pale green hand on the child’s head. “Look, Arlassair! How sweetly she sleeps!”

  “Sweet indeed.” Arlassair laid her own hand over the child’s heart. “Ah! How brave she will be! I feel it in her! Still, let us see that she does not waken till we have guided her to shore in some place so distant from these barbarians as to be safe.”

  “Indeed, let us be sure,” Shannai agreed, and chanted a spell that would ensure the baby sweet dreams until the water spirits wished otherwise. Then she joined her sister in pushing the little chest along the stream.

  Laughing like the brook itself, they batted the vessel back and forth between them until they came to a river. Then, still playing, they guided the chest a mile down, inviting a family of otters to join them in their game. Finally, tiring of the sport, they diverted the little trunk into a stream that branched off from the river to feed a still forest pool. There they left it, but as Shannai turned to follow her sister back underwater she called out, “Women of the trees, aid now a sprout! Within this trunk is a seed of a human newly sprung! Its mother has sent it to us to keep it safe from the horsemen who plague the plains! Aid this little fugitive, I pray you, for she is not of our element, and must live upon land!”

  Her whim completed, she dove deep, following her sister, and forgetting about the baby on the instant.

  All about the little chest, tree trunks bulged. The bulges moved, separated from their trees, and human, feminine forms stepped forth, skins brown and rough as bark, green leaves mantling their heads and shoulders in place of hair, more leaves covering them from breast to thigh—not clothing, but growth.

  “What marvel is this?” one asked, stretching out a hand to the little trunk. “ It is not made of wood, that’s sure!”

  “It is bound together in slabs made from the huge long teeth of elephants,” another told her, “and its bindings are gold! Does not the moonlight show it prettily, my sisters?”

  “It does indeed,” said one adorned with oak leaves. She knelt to pry the lid open. “How pretty is the gem within?”

  She folded the lid back to reveal the sleeping baby. The dryads gathered around with cries of delight.

  “How lovely!”

  “How sweetly she sleeps!”

  “How darling a babe!”

  “Rarely have I seen a mortal of pleasing shape,” said Oak, “but this one is a treasure.”

  “How shall we keep her safe from the barbarians?” asked an elm-spirit.

  “Hide her,” suggested Maple.

  “All well and good,” Birch answered, “but who shall feed her and tend her?”

  “Well asked.” Oak frowned. “And where would we hide her?”

  “Among the peasant folk?” Elm suggested.

  “No, for the barbarians are likely to plunder them also,” said Birch.

  “With a caravan trader?” offered Thorn.

  “Will they travel at all, with the barbarians abroad?” asked Oak.

  “If they do,” said Thorn, “it will be because they have made some arrangement to guarantee their safety, and that of their goods.”

  “Well thought,” said Oak, “for even barbarians want the tea and silk of China. But no caravan will take a baby.”

  “Then let her not be a baby,” Elm declared.

  The others looked up at her in astonishment.

  “You cannot make her grown in an instant,” Birch said, “for her mind will still be an infant’s, no matter her body!”

  “Not if she is an animal,” said Elm, “say an otter—or a cat!”

  The others stared at her in amazement, then began to smile.

  “A cat!” Thorn said. “What caravan would take an otter?”

  “But any merchant would wish to protect his goods from mice and crickets,” Oak agreed.

  “Is it decided, then?” Elm lifted the baby and cradled her in the crook of an elbow.

  “Yes!” “Yes!” “Yes!” “Yes!”

  “But let us give her the power to change herself back into a human, when she is old enough to wish it,” Thorn demurred.

  “Aye, and to change back to a cat, if humans are once again in danger,” Birch added.

  “How clever we are!” Elm exulted. “Together, then, sisters! Lay your hands upon her and recite the spell with me!”

  Woody hands covered the little bundle of flesh; voices like the rustling of leaves intoned a spell like the wind in the trees. As they chanted, the baby shrank, its form flowing here, bulging there, until a half-grown cat lay in the crook of Elm’s arm, its fur the color of the cloth-of-gold that had swaddled the baby. The wind-rush of voices died away, then began again in separate words.

  “Will she be strong and agile?”

  “Yes, for a six-month kitten is quick and sure.”

  “Will she have sense enough to live?”

  “Yes, for at six months a cat’s mind is far more grown than a woman’s.”

  “Will she know how to walk, how to hunt, how to hide?”

  “No, and that we must teach her ere we let her go.”

  “Well, we cannot teach her sleeping,” Thorn said, and touched the kitten’s forehead. “Small one, awake!”

  The kitten yawned hugely, then opened its eyes and looked about in curiosity.

  “Do not be afraid, little one,” Elm said, “for we are spirits who have already given you our love.”

  “We will guard you as long as you have need,” Birch told the kitten, “and lay a spell upon you that will make all other spirits of grove and hill come to your aid.”

  The littl
e cat sat up on Elm’s palm and looked about her with bright-eyed interest, switching her tail. Then she stilled, eyes widening with surprise before she darted a quick glance at the twitching tip.

  Smiling, Elm set her down on the ground. The tail twitched again; the kitten dove for it, and was instantly lost in the game of chasing her own tail-tip.

  “She must have a name,” Birch said. “Was there nothing writ on the little chest that held her?”

  “No” said Thorn, “but I remember a word embroidered on her coverlet, in the strange letters that the Greek priests brought.”

  “I saw that, too,” Elm said.” ‘ Balkis,’ was it not?”

  “Then let Balkis be her name,” Birch said, and so they called her from that day forth.

  “We must teach her,” Oak reminded.

  They taught. They scratched her paws in the dirt, and instinct took over; with no more teaching than that, she learned to cover her litter with earth. They showed her a mouse and taught her its scent, then forgot their own dignity long enough to stalk like a cat and pounce. She imitated them and caught a mouse of her own soon after, and they showed her crickets, locusts, june bugs, and all manner of kitten delicacies-but they did not teach her how to fish, indeed taught her not to, for the water-spirits had been her first friends.

  When Balkis was nine months old, they cast a spell to keep her from going into heat until her human form was fourteen years of age. When she was ten months, a dryad at the fringe of the grove saw a caravan approaching. She told the others, and the word ran to Oak, who told the kitten, “We would dearly love to keep you by us always, but cruel men are riding through this land every day, and if they should see you in girl-form, they might kill you.”